After breakfast we went up to the top deck so we could enjoy the scenery of the Wu (woo) Gorge. This is considered the most beautiful of the three gorges, and is home to the Goddess Peak. We could just make her out through the heavy fog.

The boat moored shortly afterwards at the Goddess Stream and we disembarked and walked about 1km through a series of boats and ships and floating docks until we arrived at a series of smaller boats, powered by 30HP outboard engines. These boats were surprisingly fast considering the load they were carrying, well at least on the one we were on. There is a family of very large Germans who were in our group and the guide was tactfully trying to ask for all of us to not move around too much as the boat was not balanced. She did mention directly to the largest family member, not quite so subtly a little later on, that the tea grown in the area was very good for weight loss! I don think the large German family understood her comment, or if they did, they chose to ignore her.

As the weather was pretty poor, the scenery on the way up the smaller stream was hard to absorb. The guide tried hard to take our mind off this by singing to us in Chinese. We were told that when we moored (30 minutes later), we could walk for 20 minutes and enjoy folk singing and dancing. What a surprise  we got when we stepped out on the floating pontoon to find we were at the end of the stream and all that was there was a set of floating toilets. And our walk was around in circles on this small floating pontoon only. The folk singing (no dancing) consisted of the tour guides singing along to some recorded music.

I was trying hard to see this singing, as this was supposed to be a highlight, and with all the Chinese tourists with their umbrellas out standing in front of me, I decided to climb up on a raised level of the pontoon. I was enjoying the performance when I felt a few small slaps on my bottom. I chose to ignore these as I thought it was Mick being friendly. When he would not desist, I turned to find a Chinese gentleman looking at me quite sternly and indicating I should get down immediately. Which I did of course!

The visibility on the way back to our boat was better so we did get to see some spectacular sights.

After lunch, the boat passed through the third and final gorge, the Qutang (chew tongue) Gorge – and this one is considered to be the most beautiful (but wasn’t that the Wu Gorge I hear you ask? Am just writing what the commentator told us) . Most of the passengers, including us, again scrambled to the top deck to take photos of the apparently beautiful scenery, although the mist and fog made it pretty hard to see.

Every day there is an excursion for us to participate in that is part of the trip and then each afternoon there is an optional excursion to somewhere..every one costs 295RMB per person. During this time, we choose to relax and read or attend some onboard lectures.

When the afternoon tour was on today we stayed on board and were entertained by the local people who pulled up in their boats beside us and sold passengers fish and oranges. They used nets attached to long pieces of bamboo to pass up their wares and to collect their cash. One of these boats had dozens of empty barrels which were passed onto the boat and filled with food scraps, we guessed for stock.

Off to enjoy a cocktail tonight before dinner as we can not afford the wine. A bottle of Aussie Griffith wine is on sale for almost $60 AUS. Crazy.